With a pale face Jack stared at the crack hovering in front of him. Though it was invisible for a normal mortal’s eyes it looked like a harbinger of calamity to him. With a shivering hand he touched the crack. A warm feeling of Qi washed over his fingers, but even more concerning was the slight quivering he could feel in the space around it.

“Augh”

With a sharp yelp jack pulled back his hand. A deep cut had formed across the back of his hand. The cut was unnaturally clean, even the most sharp knife would be unable to cut a wound like this. And that was because the wound was created because the space between the cells of his hand had shifted.

Grimacing Jack looked at the wound. It hurt exactly like an extremely deep papercut. Still, the feeling was enough to take him back to reality. Nervously rubbing his chin he started to think how to deal with this. He had to somehow stop the still growing cracks, or maybe the whole Sphere would start collapsing.

Quickly he went through the knowledge from his old life. Magic wouldn’t work, as it had to be cast perpetual. That meant he had to use a formation made of runes. But which one? The Sphere was something that was outside of normal space, so formations simply wouldn’t work. At least non that Jack knew about.

So he had to take another approach. For Jack it was clear that the unstable space around the cracks was somehow responsible for the breaking of the Sphere. So if he could stabilise the space itself the cracks should stop spreading.

After a bit of thinking Jack finally found the right formation. A simple formation that would stabilize and reinforce space inside of it, originally meant to stop teleportation and summonings for weak cultivators. Originally it was meant for cultivators of the Foundation realm, so Jack wouldn’t be able to use it right now. But if he modified the formation to cover only a few meters instead of dozens and cut down on the amplifying runes, that would surround the core of the formation originally, it should be possible. Probably.

Jack opened the drawer on the underside of his desk and pulled out a small knife he had hid inside. Some might question why a teenager was keeping a knife inside his desk, but Jack had learned the hard way that nothing in life was safe, not even one’s own home. He had long since lost count how often people had tried to break into his room, back in his old life.

Carefully Jack cut a hole inside the carpet in a circle with a 2 meter radius around the crack. Then he pulled of the carpet to get to the bare concrete floor beneath it.

With careful use of the knife Jack started to work. A small amount of energy flowed from his Dantian into the weapon, making it sharp enough to cut through the hard concrete floor. The runes he needed were still clear inside his mind. First a circle made of 144 runes one and a half meters around the floor and then a small quadrat made of 44 runes, 10 per side and 4 for the corners, inside of it. And every single one of the small and twisted runes had to be carved as perfect as possible inside the floor.

After half an hour Jack had finally finished the formation. Sweat had long since permeated through his clothes while he was working as careful yet quick as he could.

But even though the formation was ready, it still wasn’t completed. It still needed Qi and, even more important, a conductor which would disperse the Qi through the whole formation. Hesitating for a moment Jack looked down at the knife, but he knew he had no other choice. There was simply no other conductor he had at hand right now.

With a swift movement Jack stabbed the knife into the wound on the back of his hand. It had already been healed a bit, but with the stab it started immediately to bleed again. Quickly Jack dipped his finger into the blood and used it to paint the formation in a bloody red, carefully following the carved lines.

When the whole formation was covered Jack looked over his work carefully. Not noticing anything out of place he nodded satisfied. Finally the formation was ready to be used. Jack placed his hands at two large runes on the outer circle, then he concentrated. Slowly the Qi stored inside his Dantian started to react.

Slowly the glowing drops of Qi started to lose their light as Jack extracted the energy from it. It was much more than he had used for the simple Qi Infusion a few hours earlier. This time he used everything he had and in an instant the entirety of his Qi, a small puddle of it, became grey and lifeless as its energy left it. The energy gathered inside two bright glowing spheres before it left the Dantian, flowing through Jack’s Spiritual Veins until they exited his hands, one light, the other left.

But it wasn’t enough. The formation barely started to flicker with a white glow. Jack, being just on the very beginning of the Qi gathering realm simply didn’t have enough energy to activate the formation, no matter how much he had modified it. He hesitated for a moment, but then he gritted his teeth. This situation was his fault and he had to stop it, no matter the cost. With a gut wrenching feeling he ripped the grey remnants of the Qi from his Dantian, losing his very cultivation.

But Jack ignored the feeling and continued to guide the Qi towards the formation, feeding it more and more of his power. Because even if the Qi had lost some part of its energy, the liquid itself was also a very potent form of energy given material form. One a cultivator would only use in the direst situations.

Finally, after he had lost almost all his cultivation again, the formation started to light up with a pale white glow. After a moment the air over it seemed to ripple as the space became stabilized. Watching it for a moment Jack let out a relieved sigh as he saw that the crack had stopped growing.

Jack stood up unsteady. His head felt as if had been filled with cotton and he had trouble concentrating. With slow movements Jack stumbled towards his bed. Still clothed he fell inside of it and fell asleep instantly.

---

When Jack woke up it was already afternoon. Carefully he stood up. He felt as if a train had been driving over his head. But that was normal. Losing Qi like he did always caused a very unpleasant feeling of weakness and nausea, no matter how small the lost amount was.

A quick look showed that the formation was still running properly. Now that it had been properly activated it was able to attract some of the Qi around it to keep itself working longer. But he would still have to recharge it every day just to be safe.

Then Jack grimaced. Contrary to what he had thought before the formation hadn’t been able to stop the expansion of the crack. It just slowed it down. Jack could feel how the crack continued to spread, albeit almost unnoticeably slow. That was something that the formation was unable to stop as it wasn’t because of instability in space but because of the Sphere itself breaking.

And that was very bad. It proved that the Sphere that surrounded Earth had begun to get unstable. True, his formation had slowed it down, but sooner or later the Sphere would vanish. And when that happened, hell would break loose. Qi would begin to spread across the world, Monsters would appear and hunt people. And that was only the beginning. Who knows what else could happen when this helpless world was finally opened to the outside. Rogue cultivators, plunderers or bandits, everyone would be able to come and take whatever they wanted. The amount of people who would die was unimaginable.

And all of it was his fault. Jack looked at the small crack with a guilt filled look. The Sphere had been here since eons and would have probably continued to do so, but then he had to go and poked a hole into it. In hindsight it was obvious that such an action would have consequences.

Suddenly Jack started to think back at his action all this years ago. He had used an unknown artefact that had the potential to destroy the entire world just because he wanted to become more powerful. He even knew what could happen and he did it anyway. He had valued his own life more than the life of every human on this planet. Sure those were only Mortals, but it was an entire world he had doomed. How could he be so stupid?

And he was sure that the breakdown itself was also related to him. He had just started to cultivate again and not even a day later the Sphere had started to break. That was certainly no coincidence. Not only once, but twice had he acted thoughtless and risked the entire world he was in and now it was coming back to bite him in the ass.

Letting out a sigh Jack shook his head. That way of thought was useless. For now he had to think of a way to deal with the situation at hand.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he thought about it he had no idea how to fix the Sphere itself, nor did he have a way to stabilise the cracks. So all he could do was preventing as much of the damage as he could. And that meant trying to find a way to slow down the breaking of the Sphere and slaying monster as soon as they appeared. But Jack knew that it was impossible to protect everyone. He was much too weak right now and he couldn’t be everywhere.

In fact the area he would be able to protect was small, he would probably be unable to even protect the city he lived in. At least if he was alone. He closed his eyes and pinched his nose as he thought what that meant. He had to finally tell Sam about his past and help him to become a cultivator himself.

At that thought Jack felt a bit of fear. How would Sam react? It was entirely possible that he would lose the only friend he had. And it wasn’t only Sam. His parents would definitely learn about it. And then he would be forced to tell them the truth, too.

In the beginning he had though his parents as strange and sometimes annoying, but over time they had grown to him. Having a family again was great and he didn’t want to lose it again. So obviously Jack felt nervous at the prospect of having to tell them.

Sadly, even when he told Sam it wouldn’t change much. Jack didn’t have the illusion that it would be possible to prevent the monsters to kill everyone if they were only two cultivators. Two people couldn’t do anything when the whole world was changing into a monster paradise. No, he would need an army. Or better, an Order, a group of cultivators that would live and die for each other. But he had no idea how to get other people to become cultivators. The people of this world had all been born without Spiritual Veins, so none of them should be able to cultivate. Sam had showed that there was an exception to that, but since then no one else had showed signs of forming Spiritual Veins, no matter how much they had contact to Qi.

And worst of all he had no idea how much time he had to prepare himself either. The cracks were growing slowly, but that was only a part of the problem couldn’t rely on that.

With a suspicious look Jack viewed at the walls that surrounded the room. They were the main reason that the Qi couldn’t leave the house as they absorbed the biggest part of it. But every material had a saturation point after which it wouldn’t be able to absorb Qi as well as it did before. And as soon as that point was reached the Qi inside his room would be able to pass to the outside. Sadly he had no idea what the saturation point of concrete was. Before the crack that wasn’t a problem, as the amount of Qi was too pitiful to have any chance to reach this point, but now…

Jack sighed. One problem appeared after the other. It was ironic. The last few years were peaceful, in fact almost nothing ever happened. It was just a normal, sometimes even boring childhood. And now, just a few hours after he had finally started to cultivate again he had managed to suddenly start an apocalypse. That had to be a record. Though it wasn’t one Jack wanted to have.

For the moment all he could do was to become stronger. He had lost a part of his cultivation to seal the crack, so he had to start again from the bottom of the Qi gathering realm. Still, with the increase of Qi that came through the crack he should be able to reclaim his lost cultivation soon.

With a last look at the crack Jack closed his eyes and began to cultivate. It would be a long night for him.